


Let’s Be Us Again

by RichmanSFW



Category: Cyberpunk & Cyberpunk 2020 (Roleplaying Games)
Genre: Backstory, Drunken Shenanigans, Dubious Morality, Guilt, Job Interview, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:35:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29474067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RichmanSFW/pseuds/RichmanSFW
Summary: An employee of Militech thinks back, and regrets it. Commission, a backstory from our tabletop campaign.





	Let’s Be Us Again

The pit of darkness was split open by glimmerings of light, small specks of colored beams that were poking through the blinds. The room beheld a tapestry of hues - violet, lime green, blood orange. It cast the room in intervals of brief illumination, dark one second then alight the next, glossing over the messy sheets and toppled bottles. Whiskey, bourbon. A littering of scattered clothing dotted the weathered carpet from the bed, forming a path to the bathroom; its door open but... dreary-like. The grace of the bathroom’s light was flickering and popping, hardly reliable, showering the woman’s stance in a constant push and pull between visibility. A shitty motel staple, in truth, all things; covering for yet another long night. Of work, of the partying thereafter. The need to unwind. Waking in such a place was hardly the norm for her, these days, yet drunken stupors were a dime a dozen. Whether that’d involved a cheap fuck, she couldn’t recall, but given the consistent stress that trickled through her nerves, she was bubbling into a pit of need. She’d be at her place soon enough, and yet... there was something inside her that halted such an approach. The woman looked herself up and down in the mirror, taking yet another drag from her cigarette as she did so—bare, pale legs with scant few pieces of ink dotting it contrasted by the weathered Samurai tank-top that fit her loosely, its familiar crimson malice adorning it. Same as ever. A staple. Teeth chewed into her bottom lip; the faint traces of makeup upon her face still only half applied. 

There was suddenly a luminance to her eyes, the —a soft glow of cobalt as the optical cyberware helped usher a wealth of messages to display. Perks of the job. She glossed over a single message in particular, and it nearly made her sick with hate. A wealth of remorse, fire scorching her veins with a growing bitterness therein. All she could think of in that moment was who she was; who she used to be. And the sheer condescension between the two.

A flurry of thought, a conflict of interest. The shame of familial dysfunction. Of abandonment and betrayal. Were she a weaker woman Night City would have consumed her and spat out the remains - or worse. Care and consideration and softness were luxuries few could afford, luxuries lost to her over a wealth of years. Of sorrow and strife. 

She thought of her days far from Night City in that respect. Of younger and more naive times. She thought of her first few days at Militech and the third-degree that preceded it. She thought...

Her thoughts were a jumble, a mess all around, still cast in a half-drunken haze that accomplished little in remedying the ache of her mind. 

It was a spiral. A fall without end. Vision grew blurry and with it, recollection was sparse. Where and when she was had seemed to drift, to dawdle and dance along the present and subconscious introspection. Smoke blew from her blackened lips, meeting the mirror in a gentle grace until the sight consumed her silhouette. It accomplished little but the added and growing disillusionment. 

She thought to herself... deeply, and with remorse. 

—

The walls were thin. And close. Too close. Almost... unnaturally so for the office the woman found herself in. Sunlight kissed the wide expanse of glass seen behind the interviewer and his chair, the familiar etchings of Night City sprawled across it, but... in that moment, that feeling, she felt horribly small. 

Cramped and with a stream of discomfort tearing through her at every second, still she never allowed it to physically show. The lights were bright and... decidedly so, by accident she was sure. Or on purpose? Something intense for a meeting more akin to interrogation than interview. And still, the woman refused to let it batter her resolve. She was better than that. 

The woman remained seated and resolute, a sternness to her composure that the man across from her found considerable interest in. “So. Tell me, Ms... Ark,” he muttered, tasting the words upon his tongue. “What... exactly can you bring to the table? Cliché of me to ask, I know, but-“ 

**NIGHT CITY  
2020**

The mild chuckle that followed from him had interrupted her speech for but a brief moment. Still, she proved unwavering. “Everything you need to know is in my file,” she replied curtly. “Speaks for itself.” Though there was a pause thereafter, she lightly added, “Seems we’re all guilty of cliché now, no?”

Again, the interviewer laughed mildly. A horrid sound in retrospect. “I can read your file all day, but... it sounds better coming from the source, doesn’t it? S’what I always say.” His elbows met the tabletop, hands clasped together. “Militech accepts nothing but the best, I’m sure you’re aware. Real, red-blooded American ingenuity. We keep the world right, we keep Night City afloat. Think Arasaka gives a fuck like we do? They’re animals, hellbent on stripping away everything that makes us great. And part of that problem is... in truth they scoop up whatever they can — spare scraps, any wannabe corpo looking to make a legend of theirself.” There was a clear and notable disgust in his voice, something so stark and uncomfortably real to Jennifer and who she was, on an internal level.

The interviewer seemed, in a way, almost swept up and enamored with his own, performative malice. “We’re at war,” he said with a helping of focus, an exhale following it. “And that means we need soldiers, innovators. People willing to make the tough calls. And yet the written word of a resumé is.. such an easy thing to postulate. To preexamine. I say, fuck that. Put your eddies where your mouth is.”

Ark withheld her tongue, holding the present moment with a long, somewhat concerned stare. “...your point?”

With his hands still clasped, his index fingers met and motioned toward her. “Why do you want to work for Militech?” His eyes were cast in a peer, something sharp and all too suspicious. “...Jennifer.”

Jennifer Ark composed herself, forgoing all apprehension as she barreled into a stream of consciousness that was sure to enamor. “This... this world is a rotten thing. Whatever good that’s left of it, belongs to the corpo. To us. Not for sake of some... naive ideal like altruism or s-some, some shit like that, but because of proliferation. The chasing of profit. Of progress. It is brutal out there, isn’t it?”

His grin was that of a shark. “Sure,” he replied. “Dog eat dog.”

“Right... see, I... I don’t wish to just be a lowly, filthy mutt content to eat another. I want all those mongrels to fear me.” There was a fire in Jennifer’s eyes now. “To know that I’m not just a bitch. I’m the bitch.” Her back pressed against the cover of her seat, with a gentle precision—one stocking-clad leg crossing over the other. “That’s who’s boss. That’s Militech.”

His smile had hardly wavered as the interviewer mirrored her motion, leaning back. He seemed amused, not entirely convinced perhaps but... amused. “You prepare that speech yourself? he asked in jest, his hands briefly held upward thereafter in a show of comical banter. What he poorly considered as such, by her estimation. “Like your style, like it a lot. His eyes briefly glossed over her file upon the computer screen. “Night City gal,” he muttered. “Figures.”

“Born and raised.”

“Good, good... just how I like ‘em.” There was a pause to his words thereafter, uncomfortably so. “It helps to have a feel for this place. Really get your feet wet. Among other things.” He browsed further. “Credentials look solid, competent cyberware—yada, yada, blah, blah...”

“I’m sorry?”

He briefly, gently waved his hands dismissively but not without consideration. “No offense intended, I tire of formality. It’s just asked of me. We get a lot of wannabe-king bitches here... chip on your shoulder, big dogs with big nuts, right? Eager to scare all the other pooches and bitches.”

Jennifer’s voice was hesitant but she could not help herself. “Think you’re mixing your metaphors there, choom.”

He leaned back in his chair, giving it some honest thought. “Am I...?”

“Fuck it, then.”

He raised a brow at her candidness.

“Off the cuff,” she remarked. “Formality is for losers, and you’re a winner, aren’t you? I certainly am. And that means doing whatever it takes, doing it your way.”

Once more that shark-like grin saw fit to return — something deadly and with immense appreciation. Buttering up the likes of an obnoxious man hardly proved a difficult endeavor—and still, there was a glint of disbelief in his eyes, something to contrast his otherwise toothy expression. The interviewer could have eaten it all up. “I’m an admirer of such enthusiasm. Really, I am. But are you truly prepared to do anything?” 

“I don’t have a habit of repeating myself.”

His head lulled left to right, before he spun in his chair to stand. Jennifer followed his every move as his sauntered toward that very same looking glass—content to watch the cars fly by in droves from below. His silhouette stood, hands clasped behind his back as he simply... watched. Like ants dotting the skyline, a spiral of lights, a flickering of electro-adboards across the towering skyscrapers. He took it all in with nary a word.

Jennifer sat there, second guessing every word she had uttered up until then, but her thoughts derailed when he finally spoke.

“Jennifer Ark... I like that name... come up with it yourself?”

Then, there was silence. A scourge of fear - brief but no less chilling - had tore itself through her. Blissfully and without care. Again, before she could speak, he added as he turned, “Of course not,” he said, laughing. “Though it is a name that could be granted considerable power. Militech...? Militech makes for powerful people.” The man stepped over, the click of his shoes against the glossy, obsidian flooring a harsh one. “Or... what was it you said. King Bitch? Think I have a BD of that somewhere....”

It was then Jennifer’s world came crashing to a halt, the sea of fear she briefly swam through in so few seconds had given way to something worse. The passage of time and with that, the scourge of remembrance. Were Militech to know the truth... she’d be dead.

Or worse.

—

“Lia,” a voice called, at once distant yet also close. “Lia!” 

**MANILA, THE PHILIPPINES  
2013**

Amelia was shaken from her proceedings, awash with a wave of alertness. She had been staring lazily into her mirror when...

Yukiko drew her attention, the voice’s source. “Look, I know this is a bad time, but...”

“Haven’t seen you all day,” Amelia interjected. “What’s the big deal? Had mom worried sick.”

Yukiko pressed herself into her sister’s room, idly staring at the walls littered with the signs of alt-rock and punk. A rockerboy’s dream elsewhere, made manifest by some girl in a faraway land. Her monitor kept her face illuminated, blackened lips pursing with discontent. 

Yukiko knew the look well. “It was me, sis. I got it.”

Amelia stared back at her, deeply into the chestnuts of her eyes. Something in that moment stuck with her and, yet, she couldn’t dare face it. “You...?”

Her sister smiled sweetly, almost saccharine were it not for the furrowing of her brow. “You know dad, how pushy he is. Managed to get a word in with an upper level corpo... vetted me personally thereafter. A favor for a... favor I think.”

“He recommended you,” Amelia remarked, outwardly present and obvious but tinged with bitterness. “He told me-“

“Arasaka liked my file, my credentials. It’s happening, sis... I’m going to get the fuck out of here.”

Amelia leaned back in her seat, eyes darting from the nearby mirror, her monitor, and Yukiko’s almost tearful glance. An Arasaka family through and through, that was their way - the only life those girls had ever known. A father transferred from Japanese headquarters to their branch in the Philippines, to spend his life as lowly as a janitor; cleaning the messes of those higher than him. A mother who worked as a mere receptionist there, someone taking the calls of others. A person to redirect the traffic and attention in lieu of drawing it. 

...and a sister, as bright and ambitious as she, eager to prove herself to the world. To leave this place and never return. To be somebody. 

Amelia held her tongue. Sharply. The act pained her in doing so, a knot building in her chest that was fit to burst. To burn until nothing was left. Father was cold and calloused, a rigid man who wanted more. He spoke to her of greater things, of potential, but he... he told her-

“...I’m happy for you,” she replied finally, mimicking the facsimile of a more appropriate smile. Perishing all thought, she opted for something physical. Something to dispel her presence as quickly as possible.

Yukiko brushed a hand across her sister’s shoulder. “I’m nervous, but... I think it’ll go well.” That hand moved to briefly pull her older sister into a hug. It was... awkward, strained, rife with emotion. Yukiko held her close, seemingly undone. “I know things haven’t been the easiest recently, but-“

“Yuki... please. I need some time.”

The words were simple but cold, an understandable sort as Yukiko pulled away. She wiped at her face and stepped back, stopping herself from thumbing through the records of Amelia’s nearby collection. “Sure, yeah, I get it... tomorrow, how’s about we get some lunch. Just the two of us? My treat.”

Amelia hesitated before responding. “Sure.”

...her sister left with a nod and a smile, somewhat shaken but no less willful. And in Yukiko’s absence there was a growing sense of dread that filled Amelia - something chilling and distasteful. To be someone meant making it big at Arasaka, leaving one’s mark... 

And it seemed Yukiko would be walking away with the position Amelia was aiming for. Favor or no favor, it burned her ass to no end.

When father came home, Amelia had her share of words with him. What followed entailed nothing but noise. Hurt and disappointment.

A sign of things to come.

—

Amelia Aiuchi went through her life with the fervent desire to be someone, to have even a lick of power and authority for someone as low-born as she. Growing up, her life was Arasaka. A family of shills. Hardworking perhaps but lowly shills all the same. A harsh, ineffectual father. A distant mother, lost in her growing addiction to virtus. And a younger sister, swiping a dream right out from underneath her—and seemingly with help from daddy.

It could have made her vomit. A life of struggle; of low-paying gigs, time spent over the net as an escape, and fleeting chances of bigger and better contacts slipped through her fingers constantly and without remorse. Her home had no place for her, was no home at all. 

She wished to do right by her family once.

She blinked at the interviewer several times as he spoke. Rather, as he dragged on, caught in a tired anecdote about... something or other. Something she couldn’t give less of a fuck about. 

“...ya get me, Jennifer? I can call you that, right?”

She nodded. “Sure.”

His eyes carried with them an ulterior motive, the wheels in his head turning thoughtfully with a peered look. “There’s something I got, something you can do to show me a taste of what you can bring to this company. Interested?”

“Wouldn’t be here otherwise, would I?”

With a snap of his fingers, he pointed. “Like your style but-“ The man shifted, somewhat awkwardly in doing so, as he prepared himself. “There’s a client, a weapons trader who primarily deals in arming rebels. Bolivia, Groznygrad, the Congo. Usual shit. Fight back and forth, arm both sides, make lotsa eddies. Good for business. Good for military justification thereafter, yeah?”

Jennifer nodded intently, curious as to where he was leading this.

“You’re given the choice to green-light a massive transaction. In the process you grease the eastern war economy and we earn another benefactor. But the deal in question means... oh, couple villages get bombed in the process. Civvies either dead or captured, for... other reasons. Not our business but merely a byproduct of the situation.” He shrugged. “Not Militech’s problem. We’re arming the military contractors right after to go liberate the place anyway. Makes us look good in the news, right?”

...

And he continued, his cyberware optics glowing briefly as to transfer a choice-command towards her. Her vision flashed, the uploading process complete in seconds. “Lots of bodies in the process, faces you’ll never see. No one would know you pulled that trigger.” His voice grew darker. “All anyone would see is how many eddies you raked in for us, knowing Big Dick Johnson was just set up for failure in the near future. What do you do?”

Jennifer glossed over the kill switch, the function to greenlight this supposed deal right in front of her. Millions of eurodollars before her, before Militech itself - chump change in the long run but so incredibly much for a chump like her. Money, recognition. The call between life and death. Conflicts she’d never see. Innocent bodies lost to the sands of time. To the sea of human greed, more like.

Without a further moment of hesitation she activated it herself, giving the greenlight to sanction the next deal. Eddies to transact, power to transfer, suppliers to arm... all done by her. The newbie. 

The interviewer leaned back in his chair, his feet kicked up on the desk. He smiled. In that look, that smile, those eyes, Jennifer knew she had him by the balls. That Militech would be her home from now on, her flat to bear. If they knew her - the real her - Militech would have her killed, dumping the body in an unmarked grave. Her family too, quite possibly. She couldn’t say. She merely looked at him and his awful, bottom-feeder smile. Jennifer looked forward to usurping him, and moving so far beyond a position he could hardly fathom.

He smiled stayed. “King Bitch it is.”

She mirrored the expression for but a brief moment, allowing a wave of relief to wash over her. “Happy to be of service... but, tell me, that deal you just gave. Was that real? Truly?”

The interviewer looked upon her with something of a... mixed expression, something only a man of his caliber could part with. Something pleased and terrible and rife with condescension. “What do _you_ think?”

—

Jennifer’s ears rung, the thump in her head ceasing only slightly as the pills she swallowed down were beginning to help. Finally. She snuffed out the last light of her cig into its tray, giving herself one last look in the mirror. 

Three years of life at Militech and in that time, they murdered her after all. Militech murdered Amelia Aiuchi and in her wake Ark was born. Altered documents, new clothes, new cyberware, slight facial alterations. Whatever it took to remind herself that she was a Night City girl now. Arasaka be damned, and so damned were the Aiuchi clan. She’d left and never looked back, didn’t plan on dawdling, and yet... the mind was a terrible thing. Constant reflection, remorse. The what-ifs, the how and why of it all. It pissed her the fuck off to no end. 

She withdrew from the countertop, reaching to tie her hair into a bun. There’d be time enough for the rest later.

Her iris glowed once more as she glossed over the messages again. Several in fact - many of them from work, asks and demands and deals to be made. And some were... not. There was a message from Vasily, something her eyes rolled at. The fool. Another rockerboy after her own heart. He wished. She hadn’t the time for a poor-man’s Silverhand anymore than Night City had time for another corporate war.

She knocked on the wood. Time would tell.

Under his message lay a tab. From Yukiko. 

Jennifer opened it.

_Hey._

_Hey, sis. Thinking of you._

_Dad’s sorry for being an ass. They both are._

_Hello?_

_Is this about my job...?_

_You’re busy. I get it. But look! Checkout my new office! What a view... Hope America’s treating you well, wherever you are. Be careful!_

There was a heart emoji and a picture of her fancy Arasaka pad, with a clear view of that sweeping Tokyo skyline...

Jennifer lit herself another cigarette and deleted the contact info.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow [@RichmanSFW](https://twitter.com/RichmanSFW) to keep up with my stories, my commission info, and my insanity.


End file.
